Death by Insanity

Ugh. I just want to sit here in a heap today and thank The Goddess I actually can. Not only has my client cancelled today’s work but my partner is out all day on a job… finally a day to myself with nothing but my own mind to drive me nuts!

My period has arrived two days early and I am in a lot of pain – more than usual. After waking abruptly with my partner’s alarm early this morning, I went back to sleep spent the rest of the morning dreaming disturbed dreams. I was woken by a tactile hallucination – I was sure someone was sitting on the edge of my bed as I could feel the mattress sink next to my legs. I had to open my eyes and check – of course no one was there. I closed my eyes and felt the mattress moving again though I am sure I was still awake – so I had another peek just to be sure… When I went back to sleep I started dreaming about having weird sex with Johnny Depp and then more of the usual ‘everybody hates me’ dreams I have been having of late… When I finally got out of bed it was because the pain woke me up and now I feel like I have been run over by a bus! I am SO glad I don’t have to go to work today…

I feel like I am living in my own special kind of hell right now. I thought maybe once I knew what was going on, i.e. my menopause, and had accepted it, that things would start to get easier. How wrong I was! I feel like I am on a demonic fairground ride that I can never really get off. Every so often it plateaus for a bit and I think the ride is over or at least calming down but then all of a sudden I realise that I have in fact been coasting along a great precipice and am now plunging full throttle into what can only be described as 'death by insanity'. I mean seriously, why the hell did no one tell me about this? I think describing this disturbing unreality as ‘mood swings’ has got to be the understatement of the millennium…

This past week I have been seriously considering HRT, if only to check if it really is hormones that are causing all this madness. I don’t even know how to describe it any more – no words seem to do ‘it’ justice or really describe how completely insane I actually feel right now. During my research I came across an interesting article which explains that during perimenopause – the time leading up to the last period – hormones don’t simply decline, they fluctuate violently. Pre-menopause hormones undulate in a gentle, predictable monthly wave and in post-menopause there is nothing happening at all, but during perimenopause there is a huge hormonal tug of war between your brain and your body which are no longer working in sync as they once did. To make matters worse they ‘feedback’ off each other which causes huge unpredictable surges in hormones – a bit like a couple arguing and things spiralling out of control as they feed into each other’s insecurities. Obviously this chemical process varies from woman to woman, both in terms of what actually happens and how we personally respond to the imbalances caused but clearly for many women, menopause is not simply an unpleasant ‘mid-life crisis’ or even an uncomfortable ‘eostrogen come down’ – for some women, when menopause kicks in we are taken hostage by a full blown chemical war that explodes inside our bodies, a war that we cannot see, cannot negotiate and have no real way to escape. No wonder I feel like I am going mad…

Not only do I have this enormous hormonal battle to contend with which is making any other stress or difficulty in life almost impossible to deal with but then there is the torturous ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ mental loop regarding the decision to take drugs to get some much needed relief. I can just hear the voices now; ‘Do whatever you need to do, no woman should have to suffer in this way!’ vs ‘Don’t succumb the Devil! Don’t be weak! You can do it without drugs!!’ I am beginning to imagine what women giving birth must go through with the epidural drip doctor looming under strip lights perched on one shoulder and on the other, the big mama midwife promising all the wonders of a natural birth; when you feel like you are dying, which voice do you listen to?

     

I am not going to indulge in a logical ‘pros and cons’ argument with myself about this because I know deep down that it is not a ‘logical’ decision that I must make. I used to be very ‘anti painkillers’ until I suffered two prolapse discs and it was no longer an option to refuse the cocktail of drugs they gave me. I fully accept there are times in life when we have to rely on medicine if only to survive and at those times it would be foolish not to, regardless of any potential health risks. I also know that if it came to the point I felt I really needed it, I would take HRT because I have no intention of being a martyr to the cause – my emotional and physical well-being is far more important to me than any health ideology. But having said this, I really want to embrace the ups and downs of menopause because I believe there is the potential for great emotional and spiritual healing which I fully expect HRT would obliterate in one fell swoop. (I am open to being wrong about this…)

The fact is I am in an unusual situation where I do not need to function normally on a daily basis and part of me wonders if I would be wise to take full advantage of this. If I had a successful career and/or children continually demanding my attention, then things might well be very different – as I feel right now I have absolutely no idea how menopausal women work full time or cope with the demands of a modern family. The truth is I have been caught up in a huge emotional / spiritual ‘process’ my entire life and have rarely had much time for anything else, and I have often lamented my apparent bad luck. Part of me is absolutely gutted that just when I felt I found some inner peace and stability in my life Kali should come banging at my door again screaming Her blood curdling battle cry. My reply is always the same: Why does this keep happening to me?!

Eventually I step back and look at it all from the other side – maybe I am not supposed to live a ‘normal life’, maybe my apparently ‘unsuccessful’ life isn’t some awful punishment for continually failing to be a fully functioning person. Maybe I am not supposed to ‘pull myself together and get on with it’; maybe emotional processing is my true purpose in life. Maybe I only reject this truth because I live in a Capitalist Patriarchal society which rejects emotions as being weak and shuns inner growth as being essentially worthless – one is only excused for ‘indulging’ in such perverse activities if we pay for it ourselves and fit it into our spare time like it is a frivolous hobby. The sad truth is inner work is only given any real value when it promises to enable us to re-join the human race and ultimately become more economically productive. Otherwise, what is the point of doing it? Apparently a life lived in the inner realm is no life at all…

I thought I’d come to terms with the unexpected way things have unfolded but I had still hoped that one day I could stop all the painful navel gazing and start my ‘real life’. This time a year ago – I thought things were finally on their way up (from my navel!); I had a permanent full time job in a busy finance office (OMG), a new relationship that looked very likely to stick, a nice flat and car that got me from A to B, hell, I was even beginning to save money! As I entered into June 2015, the only blip on the landscape that I could see was my relationship with my family that needed resolving and finally putting to bed. I remember going to see a counsellor and telling her that I thought my life is finally stable enough to cut ties with them and ‘get on with things’… No sooner had the words came tumbling out of my mouth than my new found stability all started to unravel; within days my partner’s estranged mother contacted him after nearly 10 years to say she was dying and wanted him to go and look after her in another country, which he did a few weeks later, but not before I was made redundant from my first permanent job in 13 years... a job I'd managed to hold on to for a whole 12 months! In the space of a month my whole life was turned upside down and as of yet I have been unable to turn it right side up again.

At first I thought menopause was just the cherry on this disastrous cake called ‘My Life’ but it is slowly beginning to dawn on me that perhaps it is something entirely different, that perhaps my menopause experience is in fact the whole point of it. Right now I feel I am standing at an important crossroads in my life; I can continue to chase a life that has always eluded me; to take HRT and any other drugs they will give me in an attempt to make me ‘normal’ again so I can become a fully functioning ‘successful’ human being and just get on with it. Or I can finally accept I am not even close to being the person I think I should be and my life is not going to ever ‘return to normal’ because there has never been anything remotely ‘normal’ about my life to return to! 

Perhaps menopause is the wake-up call that I have needed to see that I am in fact fighting a battle against myself and always have been. I have never really accepted who I am or the incredible and deeply challenging life that has unfolded before me. I have always felt I am missing out on something that everyone else seems to take for granted – a guaranteed position of being safely tucked up in the soft fabric of the human race. I have worked on myself incessantly, but always with the goal of winning my ticket out of ‘here’ – a place that to me has felt like a permanent exile from my real life...

If I were to stop worrying about ‘fitting in’ and truly accepted who I am and what my life is about, then I know I’d much rather stick with this menopausal process even when it gets really messy, scary and at times completely ‘dysfunctional’. If I was to accept that this is my life then I would see that I am already half way through it and I no longer have the time to sit around lamenting a life that clearly bears no resemblance to the one I was given. When I look at this important decision from where I am actually standing instead of where I think I should be, then I know in my heart that I would much rather take herbs to gently aid me in my process while taking as much time and space as I need to discover the wonder of the woman I already am and the life I already have:  

I am a Witch, a Shaman, a daughter of the Dark Goddess;

I am Persephone, Lilith and I am Kali.

I embrace everything about me that society shuns;

My life is unfolding exactly as it should.

I call upon the Great Goddess to fill me with love, courage and acceptance;

For myself and all that is repressed, wounded and disowned in the world.

I call upon the Divine Feminine in all Her magnificent forms;

To support and encourage me as I transition into the Crone I was always meant to be.

Ho! 

♥